First thing to know about me: I’m a coward.
Oh, don’t go looking like that now. It ain’t so bad, really. Gets a worse reputation than it deserves. Never had no trouble looking in a mirror or holding my chin high as I walk the street.
Every brave man I ever knew is dead, whereas cowardice has saved my hide on more than one occasion. Since I have a profound bias in favor of remaining alive, I’m grateful of it. I’m grateful just as I’d be grateful of fast legs, strong arms, or a steady gun hand, if any of those graced me and had kept me above ground.
I done a good job, generally, of hiding my affliction. Had to. Who’d want to partner up with a yellow lawman, for mercy’s sake? It’s easier than you’d think, playing it safe behind badge. Folks think lawmen are all hero types, and the profession does draw its glory boys, but the assumption don’t always hold. I wore the star for near sixty years and never took a bold step once. I ain’t the only one neither, and you can take that to the bank.
A few rules’ll see you through. Never be first through a door - that’s easy. Course, the other boys are like to notice, you hang back too many times. The trick is to take point every time you know damn certain there’s no danger. Any doubt, you play the caboose.
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Let’s see, what else? Never stand near the center of a posse. Always serve a warrant at lunchtime - that way, you get him after the hangover, and before he’s back drunk. Most important is simply to take up employment only in places characterized by quiet and peace. There really are such places. There were even back in 1873 in the Arizona Territory. For all my skillful avoidance of trouble, it was there, in a little town called Two Pines, that I came face to face with the most feared outlaw in the West and lived to tell of it.
The town of Two Pines, Arizona was not on any railroad line. It had no silver mine, no bank, and no theater. The whorehouse was famous for its mites and the only saloon was known to serve watered-down whiskey and close early. It wasn’t in range of any Apache, it harbored no criminal gangs of any note, and it was for these reasons and others that I had been eager to sign on there as a deputy.
The sheriff was a retired Texas Ranger by the name of John Bradley, and John Bradley had seen so much trouble through his rangering days, he’d fair lost his appetite for it. I don’t mean that the man was gutless. No, he wasn’t like me in that regard. But he favored the softer touch where possible. Some officers of the peace like to throw their weight a little - fellas who enjoy the sound of a cracking head or a clicking hammer. Not John Bradley. The few years I knew him, I never saw him throw a punch wasn’t called for.
John Bradley was a person, I wrongly thought, who would not lead me into the pathway of any harm. I was a young man then, and entertained fantasies of putting down roots in Two Pines, resting on the cushion of my cozy job for all my working years. Might’ve done just that too, but for all the trouble that come when we arrested Morgan Dell.
The arrest itself went easy, as far as it goes. Poor Morgan robbed the post office in full view of Emmet Shepherd, one of my fellow deputies. When he come running out, his two dollar and thirty-four cent score clattering in his pocket, Emmet Shepherd was waiting with a revolver in each hand.
Morgan allowed himself to be escorted, with little fuss, to the Two Pines jailhouse. He tried some pleading with Emmet Shepherd, promising to pay back the full value of his robbery, plus extra for the trouble he’d caused, if Emmet would just let him ride out of town. Well, Emmet Shepherd’s heart was as hard to such pleas as is any lawman’s. Besides which, I think he was a tad excited. Nothing gets your blood up like drawing down on a man. And as I’ve previously stated, opportunities for heroics were scarce in Two Pines. Emmet earned his perp walk that day, though I expect he came to regret it in the end.
The walk from the post office to the jailhouse passes in front of the saloon. And while no serious criminal elements called Two Pines home, that wasn’t to say the town didn’t get her share of bandits and desperados drifting through. On that day, to Emmet Shepherd’s misfortune, and to all of ours, a wretched character named Willard Powell had just concluded a poke with his favorite sporting girl when Emmet walked Morgan Dell past.
See, Willard Powell knew something that Emmet Shepherd didn’t. Something none of us did. He knew that the reason Morgan Dell was in Two Pines that day, and the reason he was staging desperate post office robberies for traveling money, was that Morgan Dell was on the run. On the run, in fact, from his big brother - the murderer, Amos Dell.
I’ve never been sure one way or the other if God sits watching us from Heaven. Don’t know about ghosts or spirits, wraiths or vampires. I believe in the Devil though. I have to. I met him.
We got warned he was coming. Ill news always spreads quick. In short order we knew that Willard Powell had run to tell Amos Dell of his brother’s location, and we knew we had a mighty problem.
The name of Amos Dell rang out in those days like the firing of cannons. He was less man than monster. A scourge of old times and Old Testaments. Even to speak his name was to cast a sort of spell. Only time I ever saw Sheriff John Bradley scared, even including later that night when it all started, was when he learned Amos Dell was coming to Two Pines.
What he sould’ve done - what I would’ve done, and plenty of better men too, without missing a minute’s sleep - was to open up that cell and let Morgan Dell take himself a walk.
He didn’t though. Didn’t even entertain the notion. John Bradley was the law, and as long as the law had meaning, so did John Bradley. Instead, he formed up a posse and we all set to waiting.
Have you ever known the sky to reflect back your soul? Your melancholy brings the rains? Or your joy makes the sun shine, and not the other way around? I’ve felt like that, time to time, and I felt it that night. Sunset round Two Pines was a reliably dandy affair, with light painting the rocks and desert in colors you didn’t know nature made. Not that night. That night, a storm came down the mountain, rattling the canyons and setting the coyotes to howling.
By dark, Two Pines belonged only to the ghosts. Word had got round a fight was coming, and those with shelter had accessed it directly.
“Mitchell, stake out the corner of the general store, and Michael, take the tannery across the way.” I said this to Mitch and Mike Drummond. They were local pecan farmers, and part of John Bradley’s posse. Both were handy with a gun, and I knew that, but that weren’t why I sent them up to be first to meet Amos Dell. No, I served them up because I didn’t fancy that job myself, and those Drummond boys were young, dumb, and full of courage.
They died first, of course.
There was no light. That’s hard to imagine in this present age of streetlights and electric lamps; no light at all. But that night in Two Pines, the storm raging around us, the night was just as black as the inside of your hat.
One flash of lightning showed us Mike and Mitch guarding their posts faithfully and in the next flash, both Drummond boys were face-down, sucking dirt. I was out in front of the jailhouse at the time, and it was in that moment when I began to reconsider my position.
Next to fall were Enoch Tate and his son, David. I felt awful bad about them two. Enoch grew lettuce mostly, but doubled as the parish preacher. David wasn’t more than a boy. The Tates were taken up behind the livery and, so far as I know, didn’t fire a shot between them before Amos Dell sent them both to their maker.
The other unfortunate participants went down in short succession. There was Carter Poe, who owned general store, until he took two in the throat. The barman, Carlos Ortega, ended up gutshot and crying out for death. The ordeal was over before it found him. Tanner Spears, Esquire tried to run off after that, but to no avail. He was struck at the base of the skull, and at least went quick.
When Emmet Shepherd stepped to the road and drew his six-shots, the few of us left enjoyed a glimmer of hope, for Emmet was highly skilled with a revolver. He fired all six, in both, and looked to be holding his own, before a double-tap caught him at the halfway point and folded him down on himself.
All that was left was me, Sheriff John Bradley, and poor Morgan Dell, stuck back in one of our cells. I’d seen pictures of Amos Dell. Who hadn’t? One hung in every sheriff’s and marshal’s office in the whole West. We had one ourselves. It read, ‘Wanted Dead Or Alive’, right underneath Amos’s likeness.
It wasn’t the likeness that made Amos familiar to me though. Not that night. See, everyone knew two things about Amos Dell. One was that he was as bad as they came. A killer of men, of women, even of children, if the stories are to be believed. The other was that his eyes were so blue, you could see them shine even in darkness.
To this, I can attest.
Before John Bradley went down to meet Amos Dell, I called out, “I’ll go guard the prisoner.”
Of course, I had no intention of guarding any prisoner. Around the time I heard the shots that took John Bradley, I was plucking off my deputy’s star, slipping it into my pocket, and hurling myself into the empty cell next to Morgan Dell.
I asked Morgan, “What’d you do anyway, to set your brother to this?”
He said, “It’s a funny story,” but then he said no more.
Amos Dell walked into that jailhouse and without a flicker of hesitation, gunned down his brother not four feet from where I hid. Coward though I am, I was more disappointed than scared in that moment. What fuel had fed this beast, I was desperate to learn.
But then, a thing happened. Amos Dell looked to me. He looked with those eyes - those eyes that glowed bright blue even on that darkest of nights - and I understood. His was an evil beyond our world. I saw it. His reason was beyond mortal men and his power was not mine to know.
Amos Dell regarded me as a palm might regard a mosquito. Then he left. And so here I am.
There’s no place for me in Heaven, I know. But I may yet see the Drummond boys, and Emmet Shepherd, and Sheriff John Bradley again. I may yet see the whole troop.
Amos Dell was not a thing that could send men to Heaven, so I figure they’re just as like to be down with me. Perhaps we’ll make a fight of it. Try to slip past that devil, Amos Dell, and make it up into the Kingdom where they, at least, belong.
If they make their move, I’ll be right there with them.
Right in back.
The End
Author’s Note: This story first appeared, and was the contest winner, in Elegant Literature, Issue #022 - Devils In The Dark.
Elegant Literature is a fantastic resource for budding writers, and one that helped me immeasurably. They run a monthly short story competition that reliably showcases terrific writing, and that I cannot recommend enough - to those looking for good stories, but mostly, to those interested in creating them. Go give them your business. And consider trying your hand!
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